Basheera Khan writes about social media, cool new software and all things geek. In addition to blogging for the Telegraph, she is an occasional contributor to TechCrunch Europe and a freelance user experience consultant. Bash is a South African living in London. Yes, another one. More about Basheera.

Could mainstream media learn a lesson in natural selection from Scitable?

In January, one of the most respected publishers in the world launched a website that's captured the momentum of our rapidly changing media and education sectors so brilliantly that it makes my head swim just to think about it.

Has there been a single headline in the mainstream media about it? Until today, not really. And the reason? Because the website in question is all about one of the most feared, misunderstood and misrepresented subjects known to man. Yep, you got it – it's all about science.

Scitable is a new project with an achingly clever name from the education arm of the Nature Publishing Group. Think of it as the überbrainy lovechild of Facebook and Wikipedia, with an entourage of PhDs on hand to answer questions from the user community.

It's an online science library for the global scientific community based on research and peer-reviewed content from Nature's archives, none of which had previously found its way into the classroom.

There are social media elements which allow people to message each other, create study groups or classrooms to follow the pre-set paths which take users through the process of learning. If they hit upon a stumbling block, there are experts on call to clarify things.

The site launched in private beta in October 2008, and opened its doors to all in January this year, starting with what many consider to be the most exciting and consequential branch of science for our times – genetics. The plan is to expand across all the sciences in the next two to three years.

It's targeted at advanced high school and undergraduate university students, as well as teachers, professionals and anyone interested in scientific developments. And most of its traffic at the moment comes from the developing world.

The aim, as Vikram Savkar, publishing director at Nature Education and head of Scitable told me, is to overhaul the way science is taught; to bring scientific education up to par with trends in digital media consumption so that anyone with a thirst can learn science, deeply, online. At this point the geek in me wants to whoop and cheer.

There are loftier and more philosophical ideals at play, too. Through Scitable, Savkar wants to help students retain the sense of that first spark of love for the simple but powerful ideas that drew them to science to begin with. And it presents a way for NPG to fulfil its self-assumed mantle of responsibility to make credible scientific research available online for free, and to encourage the exchange of creative ideas across all boundaries.

But what's I find fascinating about Scitable is that it represents a radical new move from a traditional publisher. As Savkar notes, the group that for 140 years has been publishing entirely for scientists is now publishing for science students.

This isn't an experiment to test the water. It's a massively capitalised project which NPG sees as a long-term strategic investment. It's a lateral expansion into an untapped market which creates an engaged and captive audience.

It has plans to achieve sustainability through sponsorship, recruitment and career development for budding young scientists. The governments of several countries have been in touch to ask if NPG could provide the same content customised for their cultural or linguistic contexts.

Mainstream publishers who are feeling the pinch in print and wondering just how to survive the media Armageddon need to sit up and take note. Scitable seems a textbook example of how to build upon a foundation of strength and maintain relevance to the emerging audience of 'digital natives'. And who knows, it might just make science sexy again.

This charming video clearly demonstrates the point (though I will add the disclaimery bit: to my knowledge, there's no link between Scitable and Intel, and no, I'm not an Intel shill; I just like clever advertising).